Fyodor Dostoevsky in his most widely read novel "Crime and Punishment" reveals the problem of the general structure of Russian society. The writer is worried about the rise of the bourgeoisie to the rank of the ruling classes. The desire for enrichment, according to the author, corrupts and reveals in people the worst traits hidden deep in them.
Petersburg occupies a special place in Dostoevsky's work. The city, first of all, creates an atmosphere in which all further events will unfold. This image plays a unique role both in each individual novel and in the writer's work as a whole. Thus, he can be seen as a stand-alone literary hero.
In the work "Crime and Punishment" St. Petersburg is, first of all, narrow streets where light and dilapidated courtyards-wells cannot break through at all. It is inhabited mainly by small artisans and almost impoverished officials. The protagonist, Raskolnikov, makes his way from the tiny, closet-like apartment to the old woman, bypassing Gorokhovaya and Sadovaya streets. Often it passes along Sennaya Square, a branch of which is Stolyarny Lane, packed to the brim with drinking establishments. Their guests make noise every night so that it is almost impossible for people living there to fall asleep.
Given the power with which the urban environment is able to influence the state of mind, thoughts and actions of the characters, it is not at all strange that the terrible murder at the climax of the novel takes place in St. Petersburg. Thus, the city became not so much a place as the ideological inspirer of what happened, and therefore, its accomplice.
The capital of the empire is portrayed by Dostoevsky as a large bourgeois city. However, the author's attention is completely shifted from the description of the life of the rich population and focuses precisely on its lower strata. They are, of course, poor, and poverty, like nothing else, provokes people to commit crimes to get rid of daily problems. The writer does not play on the contrast of wealth and poverty when painting a city. He confidently wields only a dark range of colors, digging into the very depths of the psychology of the outcasts of the bourgeois world.
